Boos for Bibi: Embarrassing but understandable

I was at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv Saturday night when Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s all-round troubleshooter, sought to praise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the agreement with Hamas. And I was embarrassed when he was met with an overwhelming chorus of boos.

I’ll come clean: I was among those booing. It’s become almost automatic for me to feel a sense of great anger and deep disgust at mention of Bibi’s name. So my embarrassment was for – and about – Witkoff.

I was embarrassed for the Trump envoy because he had just come off a long and, I’m sure, arduous effort to obtain a deal, and what were surely long and intense hours in Sharm e-Sheikh closing the final, gritty issues standing in the way of getting ink on the paper.

The man has been working hard these past nine months, flying off to mediate every international conflict his boss has sought to end (apparently in a vain – read that any way you’d like – quest to win the Nobel Peace Prize).

This obviously cost Witkoff a lot of sleep and probably no small amount of agita. He’s a businessman, and it’s probably quite difficult going from closing real estate deals to ending wars. Witness Ukraine, where the obstinacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin is apparently more than Witkoff has ever faced in the world of high-rises and shopping malls.

I feel for the guy. He’s clearly on the side of the hostage families and is probably dead tired. But I was also embarrassed to see how little he understood his immediate audience in Hostages Square, and how far his political awareness seems to lag behind his negotiating skills.

When Witkoff came to Netanyahu on his list of those to thank, he could have prefaced his remarks with something like “I know the sentiments about Bibi among many of you are not positive, but I respectfully ask that you allow me to thank him for….” That preamble might have softened the blow.

(Interestingly, I was also embarrassed as a US citizen when I found myself clapping at the mention of Donald Trump. He admires dictators and is tearing the United States apart through crass political vengeance, mindless policies and the unleashing of masked thugs to violently round up illegals and other undesirables. But what can I do? He slapped Netanyahu around. As an Israeli, that serves me just fine.)

BIBI DESERVED those boos. Perhaps dead silence would have been far more respectable toward Witkoff, but we all know that Israelis are rough around the edges and generally lacking in filters when expressing their opinions and feelings.

The rage against Netanyahu is strong and deeply merited.

He maintained a poorly thought-out appeasement policy against Hamas that primarily consisted of a parade of suitcases with hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which seem to have gone toward building up the Islamist group’s military capabilities and the purchase of cement and other materials to build hundreds of miles of death tunnels.

It was on his watch that October 7 happened, yet two years on, he refuses to accept responsibility, much less apologize, and he continues to dig in against the establishment of an entirely warranted official and non-political commission of inquiry.

He has torpedoed deals that would have brought at least some of the hostages home, fearing his far-right and messianic coalition partners – and a possible jail term for alleged corruption should they bolt – more than he has feared domestic and international pressure.

He has referred to the hostage families and their supporters as “phalangists” and “fascists,” and has stood quietly by as his own proxies have hurled barbs and outright slander that is far worse. Indeed, the word “traitors” has been the accusation of choice when Netanyahu, his associates and supporters have spoken of the hundreds of thousands of decent Israelis who have taken to the streets weekly and sometimes daily for more than two years to protest his government’s handling of the war and related issues.

True, the prime minister made some bold and correct decisions in his conduct of the war, for example by decapitating Hamas’s leadership, castrating Hezbollah, and showing Iran that Israel would not remain silent as the mullahs developed nukes and rockets and threw money and weapons at their proxies on Israel’s borders.

Yet none of that absolves him of responsibility for Hamas’s invasion, as well as for the resulting war that has led to so much death and destruction that Israel is now a pariah state among most of the world’s nations, including large and powerful western countries that to a greater of lesser degree had always been behind us.

Worse, none of that absolves him of responsibility for a society torn apart by governmental policies that unfairly place the military burden on only some and reward extremism in the name of Zionism, and simply because social disunity and hatred serve his political needs.

So, yes, Bibi had those boos coming. That’s because I was not embarrassed only for Witkoff – I was embarrassed for what my country has become under the iron grip of a man who seems to care only for his political survival and personal freedom in light of a corruption trial he has dragged out the way he has dragged out October 7, 2023.

Boos on you, Bibi, whether it embarrasses me or not.